iPhone, Droid or Blackberry?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Which smartphone should I get this October?

I was thinking iPhone because I switched from PC to Mac about 16 months ago and have really loved it (recalling Steve Job’s comments about how consumers can actually love a product). The PC had so many badly done things, especially relating to security and the horrible programs one must run to deal with it.

But I am a propellerhead and like tinkering with things. Several people have told me that this means I am destined for the Droid.

Finally, I’d like to try keeping my calendar on my phone in addition to our mandatory PCs at work that use Lotus Notes for calendars. The official smartphone at work is the Blackberry and it is easier to make Blackberries work with the system, but they only buy Blackberries for people who spend lots of time on the road (not me). There is, though, somebody there happily using an iPhone, who has told me some of how he does it.

What opine the Dopers? Thanks!

2

Like tinkering with things? Or like *having *to tinker with things to keep them working properly?

Droids are high maintenance because of the apps’ propensity to do things when you aren’t looking, thereby draining battery and hogging cpu cycles.

They are pretty however, and make for a nice fun-phone.

If you want a work phone, get a blackberry. If you want a fun phone, get a high-end droid. If you want to land somewhere in the middle, get an iphone.

3

The iPhone is awesome, and the 5 is coming out in October…

4

Like tinkering with things.

I hate having to tinker with things to keep them working properly. Doing so inclines me to contemplating the peacefulness of the grave inevitably close confined. If it turns out that Microsoft is not the only evil shadow government, I will have a hard time with it.

5

My iPhone works very well with Exchange so I can use it with work email. If you want to tinker, you can jailbreak your iPhone but that could void your warranty. I haven’t jailbroken mine but I haven’t heard any horror stories from people who have.

Of the people that I know who have had both iPhones and Droids., it’s about 50/50 on what they prefer. Of course there are lots of Android based phones out there, some much better than others.

If I were you, I’d go to the store and play with an iPhone and with a few Droids and see which one feels the best to you.

6

For a slightly different perspective I hate blackberries.
When I was a service manager at a car dealership and a customer had issues syncing to the car’s Bluetooth 99% of the time it was a blackberry.
I have had customers swear at me that the car was at fault. I would then pull my iPhone out sync it in about 30 seconds and make a call.
Sorry Charlie your blackberry is a POS.
Hint if you have Bluetooth issues with a blackberry pull the battery out for 1 minute, pray and try again.
I love my iPhone

7

Your company may well already have Lotus Notes Traveler technology installed on its Notes servers; if not, they really should know about it. Lotus Notes Traveler provides ActiveSynch protocols to Notes servers so that anyone using a mobile device that uses that technology (which includes basically every smartphone other than Blackberry, including iPhones and iTabs, Android Phones and tablets, Microsoft phones, and even many Nokia phones) can access Notes servers using it.

If your company has Lotus Notes Traveler on its Notes servers (and you really need to check with your company about that item), then you should be free to purchase just about any smartphone you want.

I’m an Android fanatic, but that doesn’t affect the above comment.

8

I think the iphone needs serious consideration. Apparently androids have caught up massively, but I’m still surprised at how glitchy mine can be (motorola defy). The OS is a long way from the reliability of a PC - understandable I guess as they’re so much younger. I’m not sure if this is the way it is with all smartphones, or just mine, but I’d expect the iphone to have the smoothest OS (several iterations, market leader etc.)

Android phones have price on their side of course, you’ll get a decent android phone for half the price of an iphone tarif (at least here in the UK you can). But if the cost is not a big deal then iphone has to be the leading contender.

I say that as an apple hater who wouldn’t use an iphone if my house was on fire and I wanted to call the fire brigade. But for normal folk it looks like a good choice.

9

I have no experience with any, but if I were to get one, it would be android based.

I prefer open architecture.

10

I’m a non-tinkerer and non-techie type person and I absolutely hated my Droid phone with the heat of a thousand suns. So I traded it back for a BlackBerry, because I’m comfortable with those. A similarly non-techie friend and her husband “upgraded” to Droids at about the same time and also hated them and traded back. Note that we are all in our 50s and maybe a bit more rigid about learning new technology.

However, most people seem to love Droids and my geeky brother swears by anything Mac, says it’s much more intuitive and easy to use.

11

I have a Blackberry for work and a personal Android phone (HTC Incredible). I have no intention of ever picking up an iPhone.

Don’t get Blackberry. It’s a cheap phone for calls, texts, and emails, but it’s totally no-frills, or at least the few frills it has are horrible. It’s purely a businessman’s phone, and particularly a businessman who sees the phone as a necessary evil and not a toy.

The Android did require a little tweaking when I got it, but on the whole it’s been a very smooth experience, and they’re constantly being improved upon. However, it’s definitely the PC of the phone wars (forget Windows phones) in that the reliability is pretty variable from model to model. You’ll have to do some research and figure out what best serves you. I love my Incredible, but a friend has the much cheaper HTC Wildfire and frequently struggles with it.

12

PC user here; both my husband and I love our iPhones, which we’ve had for about a year each. The battery life is (still) great; I’ve heard very iffy things about Android batteries so make sure to check the model reviews before buying.

My coworker has had a Blackberry for years, and hates it. She’s going with an Android only because she wants something with a physical keyboard built in.

13

FWIW I own a Droid and love the thing. I had a Blackberry prior to this and have to say it was the most annoying phone I have every owned. Maybe because I didn’t use it for work, mostly to surf the net while out. The Blackberrys screen was tiny, the browser hard to use and overall just a bad surfing experience compared with the Droid.
I suppose the Apple wouldn’t be bad, but I wouldn’t buy one just because I find those that do purchase Apple products the most annoying human beings on the face of the earth. Not to mention I think that the battery is non-removable. If you battery no longer charges you own a brick.

14

This and this. Apple fostered a generation of fanboys through its own clever marketing, the RIM and Android just don’t. My iPad’s great, but I tell myself I’m more clever than those OTHER Apple people, because it sorta irks me. :frowning:

And I’ve bought and replaced the battery on my Blackberry once before. The idea that I have to send the entire phone to Apple if the battery no longer holds a charge is ridiculous. They will charge me a ridiculous amount for proprietry parts, in the hope I will break down, sigh, and just buy a new iPhone. I’m on Ipod#3, so they clearly know what they’re doing…

Also, buttons. Never underestimate how awesome buttons are for typing.

15

I thought I would hate typing on the touchscreen keyboard, but really, I adjusted easily. I think it’s one of those YMMV things.

16

I like it OK on an Ipad, but I just enjoy the tactile sensation my blackberry more. And I’ve played around with my friends’ touchscreen phones enough that I don’t feel I’m being unfair.

17

I love my Thunderbolt (Android).

18

I’ll second that, I’ve got an original Droid and I can’t wait to get rid of the slide out keyboard. The only time I use it is when I’m bored and sliding it back and forth to listen to it click much the way someone would tap their feet while waiting for something. I can type much faster on the virtual keyboard. But, I will add that the Droid has a flat keyboard that makes typing (IMHO) very difficult.
Having said that, I’m tentatively planning to get the Bionic when it comes out, no physical keyboard on that.
I’m also sick of stuff from my pocket (money, papers, credit/id cards) getting caught in between the two sections and falling out of my pocket when I grab my phone.

19

As a Droid X owner, I will say this: If you choose an Android phone, make sure you choose one that’s relatively recent and powerful. Do NOT, under any circumstance, get a budget Android phone. They are slow, unmaintained, and generally horrible to use. They are hell and will make you hate all smartphones, all technology, and weep for the future of humankind. Don’t get one.

High-end Android phones, however, are comparable to iPhones.

Some thoughts:

  • Both are relatively easy to use. Modern Androids are pretty much iPhone clones in terms of usability. No significant difference, in my opinion.

  • The physical buttons on Android phones (home, back, menu, search) free up screen space that can be used for other things.

  • The iPhone 4 has a higher-resolution screen than Android phones. Some Android phones, however, have physically larger screens that make on-screen buttons easier to push (at the expense of a little display resolution).

  • Android supports “widgets”, little displays on your home screen that can show you things like weather, emails, to-do lists, calendars without having to launch a separate app.

  • Most apps will come out for the iPhone before Android. This is becoming less and less of a problem over time, but for now iPhone users still typically get first dibs.

  • Android phones support 4G connections for much faster browsing in areas that offer 4G access.

  • Android phones come with great Google integration, if you’re a fan of Gmail, etc. Most Google services are available on iPhone as well.

  • Android phones are more customizable. You can replace everything from the dialer to the touch-screen keyboard with better ones if you like (Swype, Smart Keyboard, etc.)

  • There is virtually no accessory market for Android, while the iPhone one is alive and very healthy. It’s trivial to find, say, a clock radio that that doubles as an iPod dock. It’s nigh impossible to find one for Android phones due to their lack of a standard connector.

  • As a former Droid 1 owner, I think the keyboard’s overrated. It’s really pretty useless and I switched to the on-screen keyboard exclusively. The keyboard’s not much better on the latest Droids, at least not to me.

*Blackberry’s not even a contender. They’ll be lucky if they’re still even alive in a year or two.

20

Ok, first off, because as a rabid android fan this is one of my biggest bugaboos, it’s an android phone, not a Droid…unless, of course, you’re planning on getting one of the few models on the Verizon network that are part of the “Droid” line, but again, it’s only the ones on Verizon that are called that, and even then not all of them (originally it was just a couple Motorola phones, but HTC and Samsung have, or will be releasing, phones with the Droid moniker.)

And if that first block of text didn’t clue you in, my vote is for an android phone. I love that it’s so customizable…widgets are a GOD send…though don’t get too carried away with them, or you’re battery life will go down. Rather than just have your screen open to page after page of apps, it opens to more like a ‘desktop’ on a PC, where you can have shortcuts to apps you use a lot, things like a battery meter telling you the EXACT amount of battery left (the meter in the status bar is small, and tends to “round up,” as it were (I’ve had it look like it was at 50% when barely over 30%.))

On my phone, for example, without having to open an app, I immediately on my first screen have the weather for today and the next few days, I can swipe left and I have a calendar, a swipe right and I have an RSS reader widget, and a volume widget I can use to quickly put the phone in vibrate, silent, or normal. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

At this point, there are few few iPhone apps that either don’t have android versions, or don’t have an equivalent version, at least.

But I will say the biggest downfall of android is the fragmentation…some android phones are fantastic out of the box, others need a bit of tweaking, and some models should be avoided at all costs, even from a manufacturer that otherwise has good phones. And on top of that, each manufacturer and carrier adds their own ‘branding’ things to the OS and apps. Each manufacturer, for example, has their own “launcher,” which is the way you interact with the phone. Typical aspects of the launcher are the phone dialer, contact book, text messenger, lockscreen behavior, and some other things. So a Samsung phone will be just slightly different from a Motorola or HTC…nothing major, you’d never switch brands and suddenly have to re-learn anything, the core android experience is still there, it’s more like a difference between different models of cars…the steering wheel is the same, gas pedal in the same place, but the radio is different, the dashboard, despite having the same info, looks different, etc…

Go to a store and play around with a few models. If you let me know what carrier you’re on (I assume either Verizon or AT&T since you’re considering an iPhone,) I’ll let you know what is considered the “best” phone(s) for that carrier, and which ones to avoid like the plague.